Columns by Lawrence M. Ludlow

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
By referencing Prince’s song, Pussy Control, I intentionally draw a link between politics and the intentional trespass of bodily boundaries. And it really does boil down to bodily integrity and respecting boundaries when you closely examine the concept of human rights – something the political process is designed to destroy.
On one hand,...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Like the latter adjective in its title, Free Is Beautiful, this book—insofar as it is a clear and well-argued introduction not only to libertarian theory itself but also to the close correspondence of libertarianism with true Catholic teaching—is also beautiful. Consequently, Randy England was able to harmonize libertarianism with...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Some years ago, I changed my thinking about intellectual property (IP) upon reading Stephan Kinsella’s clear exposition of the debate in his work, Against Intellectual Property. In particular, I was fascinated by his definition and discussion of how and when property rights come into play—not only in terms of the abstract concepts that IP...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Becky Aker’s novel Halestorm is a perfect companion to her other work of historical fiction, Abducting Arnold, and it takes the reader on a wild ride of suspense—girded about by a powerful sexual prohibition that threatens to crumble under the pressure of an even deeper passion shared by the two main characters, Nathan Hale and his half...

By Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Ever since the blowback retaliation of 9/11, the government has subjected people trapped in the United States to a constant stream of propaganda, war-making tax-theft, police-state spying, and outright physical and sexual molestation at airports. Although oodles of self-deceived parrots (my apologies to that noble bird) dutifully repeat the doxology that...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludow.
Exclusive to STR
This book has everything you want in historical fiction but never seem to get. As a novel, the suspense carries you all the way to the finish, and the characters have their own motives for their actions; they don’t just hang like puppets suspended from the author’s plot-line. In addition, the characters grow with the story – enabling...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
So finally, even the White House admits that the NSA’s wide-ranging program of pervy-voyeurism and spying and prying and snooping and sniffing has had no significant impact on the so-called War on the Word, otherwise known as the War on Terror. According to Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who was one-fifth of the five-...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
The first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina reads as follows:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
How about this adaptation?
“In their unwavering respect for humanity, voluntaryists are all alike;
every advocate of coercive governance is irrational in his or her own way.”
Why?
We...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
August 10, 2013
Bradley Manning
c/o Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211
Dear Mr. Manning:
I wish only that I had written to you earlier. Like hundreds of thousands of other people – and perhaps many more – I consider you to be an ethical person, a hero, someone who did the...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
I last read the Divine Comedy as a medievalist in graduate school. My brother Richard, fueled by wonderful coffees of his own roasting, recently took up the reading of this work with extreme enthusiasm – so much so that he inspired me to revisit the work after nearly 33 years of neglect. So on Good Friday of this year, I began to once again...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
The new book by Trevor Z. Gamble – The Secrets to Nonviolent Prosperity (published in paperback and Kindle editions, 2011) – provides a welcoming introduction to ideas that go a long way toward resolving many of our contemporary problems and the deeper concerns behind them. Like many of us, the author realizes that something is amiss in...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
The Failure of Conventional Schools
Parents and children are frustrated by public schools (85% to 90% of all students). Not only do they do not meet their needs, but they treat parents and children as if they were sick patients instead of as valued customers. Moreover, student needs are superseded by politically sensitive funding...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
At Libertopia 2011, visitors will have a chance to find out why a group of voluntaryists in San Diego are starting their own school. More specifically, from October 20th through 23rd, the folks from Summum Bonum Learning Center will demonstrate how a school based on intrinsic motivation and freedom can respond to the needs of the children in ways...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
In San Diego this October 20-23, visitors to Libertopia 2011 will have the very first glimpse of a new type of school – the Summum Bonum Learning Center. According to Joey Hill, director and co-founder of the school, “In the spirit of Libertopia, instead of waiting for liberty to happen at some time in the future, we decided to start...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
I have encountered a range of responses to material that appears on the website Strike-The-Root.com. Some people dislike the vitriol that rises to the surface of some of the columns. Some say the topics are too specialized. Others complain that an article was of poor quality. All of these criticisms can be partially true at times, but...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
On Sunday, the elected mass murderer and head of the world’s largest organization of violent thugs (headquartered at lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere) crowed over the success of a hit-squad that rubbed out the small-scale thug that it created during the late 1970s to do its dirty work against the second-largest...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
In February, Sky Conway introduced Libertopia to the anarchists who gather regularly at Café Libertalia in San Diego. I decided to interview him again to explore his concept for the Libertopia weekend (October 21 to 23) a bit further. I gave up on writing a formal interview article, but the following paraphrase is an accurate depiction of what...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
NOTE: The following story first appeared in the spring 1989 edition of the magazine Nomos: Studies in Spontaneous Order, where it was illustrated by James W. Judson. With the release of the movie “Atlas Shrugged,” perhaps it is time for a re-release of this bit of fun from an admirer of Ayn Rand....

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
On Saturday, January 8 in Tucson, Arizona, a man shot Gabrielle Giffords, a woman who is an executive member of a well known, brutal organization that is ostentatiously headquartered in a large number of lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. This organization is so large and pervasive that it systematically steals vast amounts of money...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
For too many Americans, history “began” on 9/11. Sadly, the same goes for their superficial sense of morality. It begins and ends with their pudenda – what they do with their sexual organs and what they allow others to do with them. Imbued with a Puritanism that has infested their collective psyche since the cold...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Environmentalism and Christian Libertarians
There are some among the anti-environmentalists – libertarians and otherwise – who call themselves Christians. Some of them believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and they often base their approach to the natural environment on the following verses from Genesis 1...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Mises on Malthus
In his chapter entitled “Harmony and the Conflict of Interests,” Mises included a lengthy section (six pages) entitled “The Limitation of Offspring.” In it he raises several key issues. First he identifies the circumstances in which an increase in population can be accommodated.
...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
The Role of “But” Libertarians and “Hyphenated” Libertarians
There is a particular subset of libertarians that champions anti-environmentalism, zeal for maximum fossil-fuel consumption, disregard for pollution, and worship of population growth for its own sake (and all that comes with it). At best, these...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Government messages employ lots of slave-speech. For example, we are told that “children are the nation’s most precious resource.” Note the misuse of the possessive. The assumption is that people are the property of the state. In a similar way, we hear about “un-renewable resources.” Usually it’s a...

By Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
This September 11, let’s help to change the “meme” that has been used by the U.S. government to terrorize Americans into submission and to cynically manipulate the grief of those who lost loved ones in the 9-11 attack of 2001. This year in your community, join hands with others who understand the meaning of the event. Carry...

Exclusive to STR
There is nothing like travel to remind us that “this happened before” – especially when it comes to examples of government running amok. I recently spent a few weeks in Germany, and I was reminded that individuals from that region are responsible for a staggering number of cultural contributions – in music, art, philosophy, theology,...

Exclusive to STR
We've all heard the following quote attributed to Winston Churchill:
'If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.'
When I became a libertarian, this aphorism seemed horribly incomplete (and you'll see my revision later in this essay). Despite its defects, many of us have traveled through the political spectrum...

Exclusive to STR
March 11, 2009
Even since U.S. Marine Lieutenant Dan Neubauer crashed his F/A-18 Hornet into the San Diego home of Dong Yoon on December 8, 2008, I have been struck by two obscene phenomena. No, it was not that the jet incinerated Yoon's wife, two infant daughters, and mother-in-law as the pilot attempted to land at nearby Miramar Naval Air Station ' as horrible as that is....

Exclusive to STR
February 25, 2009
If religion is the opiate of the people, then faith in government is the religion-substitute of today's believers in the welfare-warfare state. And if the state is god and its worship is part of the new faith: Vox populi vox dei! Off with our heads!

Exclusive to STR
August 15, 2008
This is a wonderful book'packed with personality and a surprising amount of helpful supplementary material. For example, in her introductory essay to Notes on Democracy: A New Edition, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (author of Mencken: The American Iconoclast) describes the effect of Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) on first-time readers:

Exclusive to STR
May 7, 2008
In a previous essay, NASA, the Aerospace Welfare Queen, we explored what happens when technology is grafted onto big-government militarism and the bread-and-circuses mentality of the state. The result? The kind of scientific 'achievement' described by Ayn Rand as Project X in her novel Atlas Shrugged. Not very inspiring. But to avoid being as negative as Annie...

Exclusive to STR
May 1, 2008
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a textbook example of how to quash free scientific inquiry. It also is a lesson in transforming potentially useful citizens into high-speed drains on the U.S. Treasury. Instead of perpetuating its gold-plated make-work projects and revering its state-sponsored 'official heroes,' we should recognize...

Exclusive to STR
According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, a
scapegoat
is 'a goat upon whose head are symbolically placed the sins of the people, after which he (the goat) is sent into the wilderness in the biblical ceremony for Yom Kippur.' A second definition is 'one that is the object of irrational hostility.' Some sources add that a scapegoat is a metaphor 'referring to someone who is blamed...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
The first line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina reads as follows:
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
How about this adaptation?
“In their unwavering respect for humanity, voluntaryists are all alike;
every advocate of coercive governance is irrational in his or her own way.”
Why?
We...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
So finally, even the White House admits that the NSA’s wide-ranging program of pervy-voyeurism and spying and prying and snooping and sniffing has had no significant impact on the so-called War on the Word, otherwise known as the War on Terror. According to Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who was one-fifth of the five-...

By Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Ever since the blowback retaliation of 9/11, the government has subjected people trapped in the United States to a constant stream of propaganda, war-making tax-theft, police-state spying, and outright physical and sexual molestation at airports. Although oodles of self-deceived parrots (my apologies to that noble bird) dutifully repeat the doxology that...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Some years ago, I changed my thinking about intellectual property (IP) upon reading Stephan Kinsella’s clear exposition of the debate in his work, Against Intellectual Property. In particular, I was fascinated by his definition and discussion of how and when property rights come into play—not only in terms of the abstract concepts that IP...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
By referencing Prince’s song, Pussy Control, I intentionally draw a link between politics and the intentional trespass of bodily boundaries. And it really does boil down to bodily integrity and respecting boundaries when you closely examine the concept of human rights – something the political process is designed to destroy.
On one hand,...

By Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
This September 11, let’s help to change the “meme” that has been used by the U.S. government to terrorize Americans into submission and to cynically manipulate the grief of those who lost loved ones in the 9-11 attack of 2001. This year in your community, join hands with others who understand the meaning of the event. Carry...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
The Role of “But” Libertarians and “Hyphenated” Libertarians
There is a particular subset of libertarians that champions anti-environmentalism, zeal for maximum fossil-fuel consumption, disregard for pollution, and worship of population growth for its own sake (and all that comes with it). At best, these...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Mises on Malthus
In his chapter entitled “Harmony and the Conflict of Interests,” Mises included a lengthy section (six pages) entitled “The Limitation of Offspring.” In it he raises several key issues. First he identifies the circumstances in which an increase in population can be accommodated.
...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Environmentalism and Christian Libertarians
There are some among the anti-environmentalists – libertarians and otherwise – who call themselves Christians. Some of them believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and they often base their approach to the natural environment on the following verses from Genesis 1...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
NOTE: The following story first appeared in the spring 1989 edition of the magazine Nomos: Studies in Spontaneous Order, where it was illustrated by James W. Judson. With the release of the movie “Atlas Shrugged,” perhaps it is time for a re-release of this bit of fun from an admirer of Ayn Rand....

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Government messages employ lots of slave-speech. For example, we are told that “children are the nation’s most precious resource.” Note the misuse of the possessive. The assumption is that people are the property of the state. In a similar way, we hear about “un-renewable resources.” Usually it’s a...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
In February, Sky Conway introduced Libertopia to the anarchists who gather regularly at Café Libertalia in San Diego. I decided to interview him again to explore his concept for the Libertopia weekend (October 21 to 23) a bit further. I gave up on writing a formal interview article, but the following paraphrase is an accurate depiction of what...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
In San Diego this October 20-23, visitors to Libertopia 2011 will have the very first glimpse of a new type of school – the Summum Bonum Learning Center. According to Joey Hill, director and co-founder of the school, “In the spirit of Libertopia, instead of waiting for liberty to happen at some time in the future, we decided to start...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
At Libertopia 2011, visitors will have a chance to find out why a group of voluntaryists in San Diego are starting their own school. More specifically, from October 20th through 23rd, the folks from Summum Bonum Learning Center will demonstrate how a school based on intrinsic motivation and freedom can respond to the needs of the children in ways...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
The Failure of Conventional Schools
Parents and children are frustrated by public schools (85% to 90% of all students). Not only do they do not meet their needs, but they treat parents and children as if they were sick patients instead of as valued customers. Moreover, student needs are superseded by politically sensitive funding...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
I last read the Divine Comedy as a medievalist in graduate school. My brother Richard, fueled by wonderful coffees of his own roasting, recently took up the reading of this work with extreme enthusiasm – so much so that he inspired me to revisit the work after nearly 33 years of neglect. So on Good Friday of this year, I began to once again...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
For too many Americans, history “began” on 9/11. Sadly, the same goes for their superficial sense of morality. It begins and ends with their pudenda – what they do with their sexual organs and what they allow others to do with them. Imbued with a Puritanism that has infested their collective psyche since the cold...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
August 10, 2013
Bradley Manning
c/o Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211
Dear Mr. Manning:
I wish only that I had written to you earlier. Like hundreds of thousands of other people – and perhaps many more – I consider you to be an ethical person, a hero, someone who did the...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
Becky Aker’s novel Halestorm is a perfect companion to her other work of historical fiction, Abducting Arnold, and it takes the reader on a wild ride of suspense—girded about by a powerful sexual prohibition that threatens to crumble under the pressure of an even deeper passion shared by the two main characters, Nathan Hale and his half...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
The new book by Trevor Z. Gamble – The Secrets to Nonviolent Prosperity (published in paperback and Kindle editions, 2011) – provides a welcoming introduction to ideas that go a long way toward resolving many of our contemporary problems and the deeper concerns behind them. Like many of us, the author realizes that something is amiss in...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
On Saturday, January 8 in Tucson, Arizona, a man shot Gabrielle Giffords, a woman who is an executive member of a well known, brutal organization that is ostentatiously headquartered in a large number of lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. This organization is so large and pervasive that it systematically steals vast amounts of money...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
On Sunday, the elected mass murderer and head of the world’s largest organization of violent thugs (headquartered at lavish facilities in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere) crowed over the success of a hit-squad that rubbed out the small-scale thug that it created during the late 1970s to do its dirty work against the second-largest...

Exclusive to STR
There is nothing like travel to remind us that “this happened before” – especially when it comes to examples of government running amok. I recently spent a few weeks in Germany, and I was reminded that individuals from that region are responsible for a staggering number of cultural contributions – in music, art, philosophy, theology,...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
I have encountered a range of responses to material that appears on the website Strike-The-Root.com. Some people dislike the vitriol that rises to the surface of some of the columns. Some say the topics are too specialized. Others complain that an article was of poor quality. All of these criticisms can be partially true at times, but...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludow.
Exclusive to STR
This book has everything you want in historical fiction but never seem to get. As a novel, the suspense carries you all the way to the finish, and the characters have their own motives for their actions; they don’t just hang like puppets suspended from the author’s plot-line. In addition, the characters grow with the story – enabling...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow.
Exclusive to STR
In February, Sky Conway introduced Libertopia to the anarchists who gather regularly at Café Libertalia in San Diego. I decided to interview him again to explore his concept for the Libertopia weekend (October 21 to 23) a bit further. I gave up on writing a formal interview article, but the following paraphrase is an accurate depiction of what...